Protocol
by laceycake
Summary: Chell's worked so hard to solve his tests, and Wheatley decides that a little reciprocation is in order. Sorta-Chelley. Android!Wheatley. COMPLETE.


**A/N: There's really no excuse for this other than the fact that Portal made certain predilections of mine even worse than they were to begin with. I hope you like test euphoria! I sure do...**

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Protocol

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Wheatley's spindly fingers drummed impatiently against the arm of the command chair, joints clicking together softly as they slid against each other. The other hand supported his head in a shoddy imitation of nonchalance as he scowled at the view of the test chamber on his monitor, and more specifically at the woman in the orange jumpsuit occupying it. This was the longest she had taken to solve a test yet, and the test protocol— the _itch—_ was not letting him forget it for a second.

She puttered around the chamber some more (she was doing this on purpose, she had to be) and he picked at the armrest in irritation, shredding the leather and leaving small scratches on the metal below. He shifted uncomfortably, trying to relieve the tension in some small way, but of course it was hopeless. Only _she_ could fix this for him. Only by solving the test. He grit his teeth, opened his mouth to tell her to just hurry it up a bit, would you—

Oh wait was she— She was! She had finally placed her portals and now the Weighted Storage Cube was on its merry way to the button on the ceiling. Even just watching the Cube's progress through the excursion funnel set him on edge, filled him with an odd tugging restlessness that made him squirm. The feeling was both uncomfortable and delightful. They both watched it drift, Chell idly and Wheatley rapt with anticipation, and he let out a small, staticky whine before the cube had so much as brushed the button. He sucked in an unnecessary breath at the moment of contact as cube and button and door all lit up.

_There_ it was. Euphoria. It started as just the barest suggestion of heat, crawling along the circuits just beneath his outer casing, leaving a trail of hypersensitivity in its wake and suddenly everything, the padding of the chair, the recycled air moving about the command chamber, the whirring of his own servos as he moved, _everything_ was so wonderfully stimulating. That feeling kept moving, burrowing through him to the core slowly swelling until it suddenly burst and flooded through him, blotting out everything, his rational thoughts, his subprocesses, even the nagging urgency of the itch and he let himself get lost in the powerful heat of release.

He gripped at the arms of the command chair, adding new gouges to the much-abused upholstery. His chest thrust forward, his back arched as far as it could, restrained as he was by the wires plugged into his back, and he wasn't quite sure if he was leaning away from the overwhelming feeling or into it. His feet kicked weakly and if he'd had toes he would have curled them. He threw back his head against the back of the chair and moaned at the feeling, bright, fiery, all-encompassing _yes_

"_Yes_, ohhhhhh yes, _brilliant! _Please yes, don't ever— don't ever— don't ever st-_aahhh!_"

He shuddered through one final, ecstatic burst, and the euphoria faded. Slumped in the chair, he felt sated and loose and warm all over. Perhaps a bit too warm even, as his internal fans kicked in, buzzing loudly in their attempt to bring his temperature down. He blinked hazily, savoring the few moments of clarity, of freedom from the frantic drive of the itch.

He peered through the monitor at Chell, the woman who gave him this marvelous feeling— brilliant, gorgeous Chell… Well, at the moment she was looking distinctly less than gorgeous, with her face all bunched up like that. Now that he thought about of it, she'd been making that face an awful lot lately. Ever since she started doing these tests for him.

And if he thought about some more, it sort of made sense for her to be making angry faces, didn't it? After all, here he was, in charge of_everything_, getting to feel the most incredible, delicious ecstasy every time she solved a test, and there she was, working so hard for him, thinking so fast (though perhaps not always as fast as he would like), getting nothing in return.

Not to mention she really had every right to be sore with him anyway considering the… _accident_ with the elevator in He—His chamber earlier. He'd be sore with him too, and he did feel bad about it.

He wanted to do something to make it up to her, he decided with a firm nod of his head.

This determination occurred at the exact same time that the itch came scraping its way back into his circuits, and the testing protocol got tangled up with Wheatley's own personal desires. Suddenly he wanted to reward Chell as much as he wanted the reward himself. And he was sure he could figure out a way to make it happen. He was in charge, after all. He had the entire facility at his disposal. He nodded to himself again, the beginnings of a grin tugging at the panels of his face.

As Chell made her (extremely surly) way to the lift that would carry her to her next test chamber, Wheatley set to work searching for the perfect solution to his new problem.

.

To say that Chell was angry would have been a massive understatement. Chell was way beyond anger; she was practically _murderous_. She'd had it to here with insane AIs and their ludicrous death-tests, and she was just about ready to live up to her supposed reputation as a dangerous robot-killing madwoman. It took all her willpower not to lash out at the glass walls of the elevator in a childish fit of temper.

She admitted that part of the reason she was so mad was because she had become rather embarrassingly attached to Wheatley, going so far as to consider him her friend, despite the fact that he never stopped talking and was often a bit of a jerk, not to mention she was pretty sure that at first he had only tried to help her in order to save his own skin. Or metal shell. Whatever.

Still, he hadn't _needed_ to come back to her rescue from GLaDOS' chambers and he'd done it anyway, taking a considerable risk for her sake. And dammit, there was something oddly appealing, even charming about the skinny, awkward robot. She'd liked the guy, maybe more than she was entirely comfortable admitting, and so it stung all the more when he'd turned on her, decided that he didn't want to escape with her after all, and that she wouldn't get that chance either. She slumped moodily against the curved wall.

His reactions when she finished a test, or rather _her_ reactions to his reactions, weren't helping either. All of that moaning and rolling around he did in GLaDOS' command chair seemed to strike something deep and instinctual inside her brain, causing her heart to beat just the tiniest bit faster, her stomach to clutch in a way that wasn't entirely unpleasant. She didn't dwell on what this said about her or her predilections. She huffed, blowing a loose bit of hair from her eyes.

Really, all she wanted was _out._ Was that too much to ask?

The elevator reached its destination god only knew where in the facility, and she stepped warily into the test chamber, keeping an eye out for any dangerously placed turrets, or bottomless pits.

There were neither of these near the entrance, or, to her considerable surprise, in the chamber at all. In fact this particular test seemed entirely non-lethal, and fairly simple to solve, which struck Chell as being an incredibly bad sign. Wheatley was there to greet her on a monitor as usual, although something was different about his expression. He looked as anticipatory as he always did, but there was an extra edge of eagerness to his face as he grinned at her.

"Say, luv, have you ever been stung by a bee?" She held back her surprise; the nonsequiter was especially strange even for him. Chell glowered at the monitor and he blinked back, smile fading. "No I really actually want to know. It is a bit of an odd question, yeah, but I would still like for you to ah— to answer it." With a roll of her eyes Chell shook her head. "Oh, is that right? Bit of a shame really, because that was meant to be your frame of reference for what this is going to feel like."

A robotic arm shot out suddenly from the wall and she whirled around to face it, hefting the portal gun to use as a club but not managing to do so before the large claw clamped around her upper arms and chest, immobilizing her. From behind her she could hear another arm approaching, and then felt something jab into the back of her neck.

It felt like being stuck with a pin, followed by a flash of what was probably the most intense agony Chell had ever felt. It shot down her spine, hot and oily and nasty, but it was so brief that she hadn't even sucked in the breath to cry out before it was already over, leaving not even an echoing ache to remind her that it had been real.

The claw dropped her and she rubbed her neck indignantly, shooting the most scorching look she could manage at Wheatley's face on the monitor.

He didn't look fazed in the slightest. In fact he was smiling again; a slight shiver went through him, the lights of his eyes guttering slightly like a candle in a drafty room and he almost seemed to purr. The reaction reminded her of the paroxysms he went into upon her completion of a test, and something about that made her very nervous.

She adjusted her grip on the portal gun, barely paying mind to GLaDOS angrily demanding to know just what Wheatley had done, although his answering chuckle prompted an odd jolt through her nerves. It wasn't a bad jolt either, and that seemed especially ominous. That feeling of foreboding followed her all through the test chamber.

.

Wheatley wasn't entirely sure if the itch really was stronger or if the nagging anticipation gnawing at him was his own, but the wait for Chell to solve this test was the worst he'd experienced. It had barely been half the amount of time it had taken Chell to finish the last test and he was already a wreck, and just about ready to start begging.

He squeezed his eyes closed and clenched his fists, knocking his head lightly against the back of the command chair, forcing down a frustrated whine. This wasn't going to do at all, it was eating him alive—

Finally he turned to the monitor, all ready to reprimand her for dragging this out so long, with a bit of a growl that turned into a startled squawk when he registered the sight of the test chamber, every laser pointed neatly into its receptacle, every platform raised except for one, and the cube dropping cheerfully from the portal on the ceiling toward the button—

The solution euphoria caught him off guard this time. He bowed outward, his legs drawing upward, hands curling into claws, wrists and ankles bent back like the burning bliss was pulling him into himself. His voice rang out through the chamber, a hollow, rattling sound that might have been a half-formed word.

Oh, _ohhh_ this was the best he'd felt yet, better even than that first surprising assault on his circuits, and he knew it was because of _her_, that through the two of them the feeling doubled, tripled over itself, rebounding and growing, more overwhelming than ever.

He tried to tell her, to thank her, or maybe just articulate some of this wonderful, terrible, _perfect_ sensation through her name, but his voice caught on the hard initial sound like a skipping record.

"_Ch-ch-ch-ch-chchchchchhhh—!_"

Slowly the solution reward faded, leaving Wheatley to slump down, thoroughly exhausted. He opened his eyes to peer at Chell blearily, and was immediately struck with a pang of disappointment. She was glaring at him as woefully angry as ever; that was definitely not the face of someone who had been treated to a dose of euphoria. The glowing feeling of contentment that accompanied the aftermath of the reward protocols was pushed aside by a tide of dismay. _Why hadn't it worked?_ He was sure he'd done everything right... A bitter sense of failure rose up in him, partly from the test protocols and partly from himself; he'd not only failed, he'd failed _her_, failed to give his lovely, hard-working test subject the reward she deserved.

Even though he could feel his unspoken apology written all over his face, she seemed unfazed. Still glowering, she turned to walk toward the open door and that was when the delayed reaction hit.

Wheatley could see it moving through her body in stages, like it did to him. First her eyes went wide, pupils dilating and her lips parted in a gasp as she pressed her free hand against her lower belly. The portal device clattered to the floor, its potato passenger screeching indignantly, and the hand that had held it splayed out to catch her as she sank unevenly to her knees.

She curled over herself slightly, breathing in sharply before bowing outward, her chin tilted upward, her neck stretched to the side. And the look on her face… Wheatley had never seen the likes of it before, eyes squeezed shut, brows high and knitted inward, lips—which seemed redder to him, if he wasn't imagining things— parted wide and trembling slightly. There was a bright wash of red beneath her skin as well, most prominent across her cheeks and along her shoulders. She shook, a fine tremor chasing through her as she sighed.

Now _this_ was much more like it. This was delightful; it was nice enough to see her looking anything other than livid, but this look— this look of utterly consuming ecstasy was captivating to say the very least.

He reveled in every detail of her pleasure; the way she couldn't seem to catch her breath, her flexing throat as she swallowed, the nearly imperceptible shivers chasing through her whole body.

The fingers of the hand propping her up flexed, her nails scraping lightly against the smooth panel floor and _oh_— Oh he could _feel_ that, as though she were scratching directly at his chestplate, his arms, the oddly sensitive panels on the outside of his hips. The sensation caused something to course through him, similar to the itch but subtler, and much less unpleasant.

Still drinking in the sight of her, his thoughts started to churn, the beginnings of another new idea taking shape. Finally Chell seemed to regain control of herself, catching her breath with a final sharp gasp, her inhalation lined with something unfamiliar to his ears, something that might have been her voice.

Grinning at this lovely new sound, Wheatley turned away to allow her to collect herself in relative privacy, turning his attention to the control panel. With his idea coalescing into an all-out plan, he began to arrange a new testchamber just next to his command room, and program the lift carry Chell— beautiful, darling, still-trembling, thought-she-could-hide-that-shaky-little-smile-from-him-didn't-she, Chell, that much closer to him.


End file.
